1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a translation apparatus and a translation method for translating a character-string written in a first language into a second language.
2. Description of Related Art
It was formally known that a voice recognition technology recognizes an uttered voice and converts it into text, and an automatic translation technology translates a character-string in a first language into a character-string in a second language. Moreover, a voice translation system, a combination of above-mentioned technologies, has been being put into practical use. However, the current technical level has significant problems in terms of the processing speed, the processing accuracy, and the users' expectations in achieving the quality.
Therefore, comparing with conventional technologies, a new apparatus has been proposed that is able to translate into a natural sentence in a short time so that the user can comprehend a whole sentence (please refer to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H1108-263499). According to Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H08-263499, the apparatus divides the pre-translation character-string obtained from an uttered voice into prepared plural division units, and it further translates each divisional unit into the target language (partial translation), translates the character-string into the target language without being divided (whole translation). Then, the result of the partial translation and the result of the whole translation are compared with each other. Consequently, the apparatus outputs the final translation result after eliminating redundant expressions.